Walking back to the cell block, Saxon said, “Yeah?”
“You better check that woman prisoner. Some awfully funny sounds are coming from there.”
Saxon continued on to the last cell. What he saw made him hurriedly draw the key ring from his pocket and unlock the door. The blonde stood on the dropdown bunk. One end of her headscarf was knotted about an overhead water pipe; the other end she was winding about her throat.
As he turned the key in the lock, she quickly unknotted the scarf and dropped it on the bunk. By the time he got into the cell, she had jumped down to the floor.
Saxon paused in astonishment when she took hold of the front of her dress and deliberately ripped it to the waist, also bursting the center strap of her brassiere to bare small but well-formed breasts. Her skirt came up to her waist and she savagely tore at the unglamorous plain white cotton panties she was wearing. The elastic burst and the material split, allowing them to slither down to her knees. She completed their destruction by ripping them right in two and letting the segments fall to the floor.
Then she hurled herself at Saxon, scratching, kicking, biting, and screaming. Fingernails burned one cheek. He made a grab for the clawing hand, missed, and felt her teeth sink into his palm. The toe of a pointed shoe dug into his shin.
Spreading his arms, he managed to pin hers to her sides by enveloping her in a bear hug. Her pointed toes began to beat a tattoo on his shins and she attempted to get an ear in her teeth. He pulled her over to the bunk, threw her down and held her there by the simple expedient of falling on top of her with the full weight of his two hundred pounds.
Quite suddenly she relaxed.
“You going to cut it out?” he growled.
“All right,” she said in an entirely calm voice. “Get up. You’re hurting me.”
Cautiously he released her arms and started to rise to his feet. At once her legs shot out to encircle his waist and her arms locked about his neck. She gave an abrupt jerk that pulled him off balance and made him fall heavily atop her again.
A voice from the cell door said, “What the hell’s going on here?”
Then the woman was pushing against his chest, fighting him away and screaming again. Saxon fell from the bunk to his knees, climbed to his feet, and staggered backward across the room, to back into someone in the doorway. He turned to find Sergeant Morrison glaring at him in outrage.
“She’s gone crazy,” Saxon said. “She tried to hang herself, and when I came in to stop her, she was all over me like a swarm of hornets.”
“Looked to me more like you were all over her,” Morrison said in his rumbling voice.
The woman still lay sprawled on the bunk, her skirt bunched around her waist to disclose her bare thighs, her naked breasts heaving. In a flat, unemotional voice she said, “He raped me.”
After staring at her for a moment, Saxon walked over and picked up the headscarf. Morrison was still standing squarely in the doorway when Saxon turned back toward the door, a belligerent expression on his face. But as Saxon bore down on him, the expression on the acting chief’s face turned Morrison’s expression uncertain. At the last instant he stepped aside.
Relocking the cell door, Saxon stalked to the waiting room, trailed by the silent Morrison. Tossing the headscarf on the counter, Saxon entered the washroom, leaving the door open, and stared into the mirror over the washbowl. Two raw scratches ran down his left cheek. Rubbing water on them, he patted his cheek dry with his handkerchief, then ran water over his bitten hand and dried that too.
Sergeant Morrison watched silently from the washroom doorway. When Saxon turned toward the door, again he stepped aside to let him pass. Saxon walked behind the counter. Morrison walked over, leaned his elbows on the counter, and regarded the acting chief steadily.
“You can stop looking at me so accusingly,” Saxon said irritably. “I don’t know why she pulled that. Maybe she’s just got a grudge against all cops.”
“Pulled what?” Morrison asked quietly.
“Faked my raping her.”
“I saw it,” Morrison said in the same quiet tone.
Saxon said hotly, “You saw the tail end of a deliberate act. She lured me into her cell by pretending she meant to hang herself. Then she ripped her own clothes and jumped me.” He came back out from behind the counter. “Come with me and I’ll prove it.”
He led the way back to the cell block and stopped before the first cell. “You couldn’t see into the last cell,” he said to Coombs. “But you could certainly hear everything going on. Tell Sergeant Morrison what happened.”
“Sure,” Coombs said. “You raped the woman.”
Chapter 7
Saxon glared through the bars at the man, “Quit horsing around, Coombs. This is no joke. Tell the truth.”
“I’m telling it,” Coombs said calmly. He looked at the sergeant. “The chief here kept going back to the last cell and asking the woman if she wanted a little company. I didn’t like the way he asked it, and neither did she, because she kept telling him to get lost. Finally I heard him unlock the cell and go in. I heard her say, ‘Leave me alone! Stop it! Are you crazy! You’re hurting me!’ Not all at once. There were little gasps and cries and suppressed screams, like he was holding his hand over her mouth, in between. A couple of times there was the sound of tearing cloth. It was clear to me he was raping her, but locked in here, I couldn’t do a thing about it.”
Saxon stared at Coombs with his mouth open. After a long time he said, “Why, you lying punk! You’d go that far to get even for a lousy traffic ticket?”
“You told me to let the sergeant know what happened,” Coombs said reasonably. “So I told him.”
Saxon strode back to the last cell and looked in. The woman still lay sprawled in the same position. She looked at him with such hate that, in spite of himself, he couldn’t suppress a twinge of guilt, immediately followed by a rush of anger at both her and himself for allowing her histrionics to begin to get to him.
Returning to the first cell, he said, “Now that you’ve had your little joke, Coombs, tell the truth.”
“How many times do I have to say it?” Coombs inquired. “You raped her.”
Saxon looked at Morrison. “Do you believe this guy?” he demanded.
“Uh-huh.”
“I told you the way it really happened. Your prisoner deliberately framed me. And Coombs is backing up her story because he’s sore about being jailed.”
Morrison slowly shook his head. “You’re not getting through to me, Chief.”
Saxon felt his face redden. “So what do you plan to do about it?”
“I can hardly place a police chief under arrest in his own headquarters,” Morrison said tonelessly. “But I’ll be damned if you get away with raping a prisoner of mine left in your custody. I want a doctor to examine this woman before she leaves here. And I want your district attorney brought down here to decide what to do about you.”
Saxon stalked past him back to the desk, lifted the phone, and dialed the number Jenny Waite had left in case of emergency. It was the private home of a friend of the meter-maid’s, and he had no trouble getting her called to the phone.
“Sorry to break up your party, Jenny,” Saxon said. “But I need you at headquarters right away.”
“Oh, no!” she said. “Tonight of all nights.” Then her tone became resigned. “Okay, Chief. Soon as I can get home and change into uniform.”
“Skip the uniform,” Saxon said. “I want you here fast.”
“If it’s that important, I’m on my way,” Jenny said.
Breaking the connection, Saxon dialed the hospital. When the switchboard operator answered, he said, “Is Dr. Harmon still in the hospital?”